Privy digging in New England

[downeastdigger]

Hi Guys, getting ready for some snow up here. I'm wondering how I could start a catagory on here where during the course of the year, people including me could report in on present and past PRIVY digs that they have partaken in here in Northern New England. I made it my mission 3 years ago to devote my digging time to answer the question " Are there privies full of bottles to be dug here in Maine, NH, northern Mass. I've dug dumps, land fills, ravines etc for 20 years with great success, but if there are privies to be had out here, I want to dig them !

I took a trip out to Syracuse to visit digging buddies, and to accompany them on a genuine permission style privy dig. I told them I would take no bottles, I just wanted to see what a deep, lined, old privy was like to dig. We probed our way down through 2 feet of regular topsoil in the middle of a yard, ( using an early map to locate the exact spot). I was having a hard time believing there was a privy there, but my buddy insisted. Finally after over 2 feet of regular clayish dirt, the next shovel full came up as white wood ash. I was amazed. We did the whole deal, finding the 4 walls, cutting sod onto tarps, digging through 3 more feet of ash, until a 1 foot deep trash/ seed layer appeared. Nothing in the privy was NEWER than 1860, so every item in it was pontilled. There was lots and lots of china, and several, not tons of bottles, but some good ones.

Since then I have been determined to find what privies are up around where I live. I have had many permissions and probed many yards, but with limited success. I did however find privies with trash in them, so they are indeed here.

Anyone interested in this? I could start off the catagory with what I have found ( and havn't found) so far in terms of NH/ Maine privies. I have a few pics I took, and pics of the bottles I found, but they aren't too impressive. Still, all it would take is that one 1850 deep privy with 50 pontilled bottles, and it would make all the work/research more than worth while.
Let me know what you think. We could make it a challenge to see who finds the best New England privy in 2006.
Take care, Bram

 

[bearswede]

I think it's a great idea, Bram...

Maybe the weekend of the show all the forum members there can get together over beers and talk it up... I bet there's some sweet privies in and around Old Deerfield here in western MA...

Ron

PS... If any deep, wet ones are encountered (Cap, bite your tongue) we could send Wayne down in his diving gear... ROR

 

[Mainepontil]

Guess I better break out my Sanborns. []

 

[portland med. man]

here`s one we dug in south portland in maine pontils apt. building ....

 

[capsoda]

Hey Ron, Beers is always a good idy.[8D]

And my wife threatened me if I make comment o n the utter ting.[&:]

 

[NH Bottle Diver]

We're in, my dive and digging partner (Diverdown2) and I have been aquiring bottles the hard way for 13 years now. I just got digger o'dells privy diggin book and we plan on digging up central NH this spring (got the excavator on order)

 

[Caretaker maine]

Maine seems to have as many bottle digger as it has snow flake , wait til April, there will be alot more of them, Bram , you ever talk with Jack Pelleter, I learned of him down in Keene years ago, when I went to the bottle show there, I lived 5 miles south of Keene for 25 years, guess he's runs a club up here

 

[downeastdigger]

Hi Pontilled Med Man, thanks for the privy pic. That is the first New England privy I have ever seen a picture of, aside from the ones I've dug. How deep did it go? Any whole bottles?


As I said, I have been digging for 20+ years, but have had New England privies as my obsession for only a couple of years.
Here is a list of what I have found in terms of PRIVIES in Maine/ NH so far...

Dover NH - Wood lined ( wood was rotted away mostly) side by side holes, each one was
about 3 deep, and 4' X 4' square. They were about 6 feet off the back of a
small house. The bottles were stacked tightly, pulled out about 70 bottles, but
most were unembossed 1880-1890 medicines. It did have one unembossed
8 sided aqua pontil med about 7" tall, and a pontilled Family Hair Dye bottle.

Dover NH - Two small holes, I dont think they were lined, they seemed to be just a dug out

 

[downeastdigger]

(sorry pressed the wrong button)
anyways, they seemed to be just dug out shallow holes, they were just about 2 feet deep
and about 4' X 3' square. They were full of tree roots, and the digging was very hard. They
were very early holes, and had early china and clay pieces. The whole bottles included about 8 common medicines, 3 pontilled puffs, a clear cathedral cologne, and the best hole bottle was an early clear/flint glass " Dead Shot for Bed Bugs from Vermont. There were 2 broken purple Tebbits Hair renewers, and shards from an amber eagle flask.
These holes were about 40 feet back from the house, along the back property line.

Exeter NH - A very wide privy, about 10' by 10', only 2 or 3 feet deep though. It was within the "L" of a very large estate. I dug about 100 bottles from it, mostly small and aqua. I took home about 30, if I remember right. Many of them were local druggist bottles embossed , from a druggist that was just up the street. There was also one very interesting bottle, it was an aqua umbrella ink, with an IRON pontil. I've never seen that before. Only one other pontil shard was found.

Exeter NH - Two other very early homes, probed the yards til my arms fell off. I found one
"pocket of trash" in the yard, but I can't call them privies. They were where the
privy would have been, but they were more like a 2 foot deep round hole,
irregular in shape, no definition to it. One had turn of the century bottles, no
keepers, ( but a top to a stoddard flask in the mix). The other was very early,
and had no bottles or bottle pieces, only ash and very early pottery shards.

Eliot Maine - I probed a yard, but found no privy. I probed a spot behind a tree in the corner
of the yard, an hit glass about a foot down. I deduced later that the privy was
attached to the large house, and the privy was cleaned out and dumped regularly
into this " clean out hole ". I've been told that a house like this might have had
a large box or basin under the outhouse hole, which was regularly dragged by a
horse up the hill and dumped in a hole. This hole yielded quite a few very clean
aqua smooth based bottles, mostly common ( Johnsons Anodyne, Kilmers, etc)
many unembossed, a couple of pontilled shards. One good bottle that came out

 

[downeastdigger]

damn, I pressed the wrong button again...

anyways the one good bottle there was an rare aqua pony soda from Portsmouth ( Hilton )
That clean out hole was about 50 feet from the house, at the corner of the yard.

Portsmouth NH -

This was a killer, it was the one and only "lined" privy I've found in New England, and it was huge, and behind a 1700's house. I found it with a long probe, and followed the probe up with a post hole digger to get a sample down deep and at about 4 feet down and pulled up the top of an aqua pontilled ink! I thought this one was going to be my Holy Grail ! It turned out to be EMPTY ! That was the bad news, the good news was that it was a deep rock lined privy, full of ash, so it let me know that there are deep lined privies in the area, and I cant help but believe that some of them are loaded with bottles ( right?). The hole was about 6' by 6' square, and
about 6' deep before we hit water. The bottom of the pit when we reached water was a layer of gravel or crushed limeston. I probed down into the water, and wasnt hitting anything but gravel as far as I could probe.
The hole was full of ash. I did find one amber seam sided flask, which was cracked. I also found a shard of a large pontilled demi john, and it had graduated numbers in it that had been scratched into the glass. It was very interesting because the scratched numbers were in a 1700's looking style of writing. I have it on my mantle in the living room now.

So thats my whole inventory of Privy digging in New England so far. I had taken some pictures of the Portsmouth hole, but the disk got currupted.

I'm anxious to hear any other New England privy stories, see photos, listen to your opinions about whether most homes around here had dug, lined privies, or if there was just a clean out tray that was dragged from under the privy hole, etc etc.
Thanks for reading, if you got this far !
Bram